Cover crops top the list of tasks U.S. farmers are told will build healthy soil, help the environment and fight climate change. Yet after years of incentives and encouragement, Midwest farmers planted cover crops on only about 7% of their land in 2021. Many worry the practice will hurt their bottom line.
Dust fills the air as a combine harvests corn, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023, at a farm near Allerton, Ill. Cover crops top the list of tasks U.S. farmers are told will build healthy soil, help the environment and fight climate change. Yet after years of incentives and encouragement, Midwest farmers planted cover crops on only about 7% of their land in 2021. Cover crops top the list of tasks U.S. farmers are told will build healthy soil, help the environment and fight climate change.
The practice is key to government efforts to sequester carbon in farmland to help reduce climate change, since there’s general agreement planting the right off-season crops can pull carbon from the air and keep it underground in plant roots. The NRDC points to studies that have found cover crops don’t necessarily reduce cash crop yields and can boost growth. And Lara Bryant, the group’s deputy director of water and agriculture, notes that while the overall percentage of farmers planting cover crops is small, acreage increased by 50% to about 5% of U.S. cropland from 2012 to 2017, the most recent year USDA data is available.However, the 2022 satellite study found yields declined by an average of 5.
Terry Cosby, chief of the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, acknowledged establishing effective cover crops can take time and some experimenting but said farmers who stick with them should see significant benefits. He noted the Biden administration’s allocation of $19.5 billion for climate smart programs over five years and that federal, state and university outreach services can provide technical advice.
Less than 20 miles away, fourth-generation farmer Curt Elmore has been “dabbling” in cover crops for a decade, planting varieties like oats and rye on parts of the 2,000 acres he farms.
Canada Latest News, Canada Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Midwest Loses Thousands of Jobs as Southern States BoomA new report shows that the Midwest lost 13,000 jobs even as employers hired 113,000 people nationally.
Read more »
Midwest, Northeast snow squalls bring white Halloween and start to NovemberSnow piled up in parts of the Midwest on Halloween, and Mother Nature also dished out a taste of winter for parts of the Northeast after trick-or-treating festivities wrapped up, with some Northeasterners waking up to a coating of snow on the first day of November. An Alberta clipper system, a type of storm that...
Read more »
Cover crops help the climate, but they are costlyCover crops top the list of tasks U.S. farmers are told will build healthy soil, help the environment and fight climate change.
Read more »
Tattered Cover’s troubles remind us to shop at independent bookstoresBe book smart: Here’s a list of dozens of independent outlets in Colorado.
Read more »
Dollar’s rally has run out of steam but a turnaround is not likely yetAfter falling by 14% between September 2022 and early July this year, the US Dollar Index recouped half of that fall in Q3.
Read more »
Gran Turismo 7's Biggest Update Yet Adds More Cars and New PS5 FeatureGran Turismo 7 enters the SPEC II era with a massive new patch.
Read more »